


The Politics of Heaven

by Saucery



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Church vs. State, Commentary, Episode Related, Essays, Faith vs. Betrayal, Gods, Heaven, M/M, Meta, Politics, Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Religions, Religious Conflict, Religious Themes & References, Slash, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-27
Updated: 2011-06-27
Packaged: 2017-10-20 18:47:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/215965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saucery/pseuds/Saucery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This bit of meta is one or both of the following: 1) A gullible, hopeful look at the Dean/Castiel dynamic, circa episode 16 of season 6, or 2) an utterly shameless politicization of <i>Supernatural</i> along Liberal lines. If either of these things offends you, please do not click on this!</p><p>Can also be read as a prequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/215754">The Darkest Hour (Comes Before the Dawn)</a>, which focuses on the season finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Politics of Heaven

Okay, so it's official.

Dean/Castiel is canon. It's _canon_ , okay? Which isn't exactly a surprise to most of you, I _know_ , ever since Balthazar said a couple of episodes ago that Castiel was in love with Dean, and... nobody contradicted him. Very _obviously_ , nobody contradicted him. Not even _Dean_.

And now? They've had a canonical break-up. But it's not a _break-up_ break-up, because they obviously love each other, but Cas is the gambler/conman/mafia husband that thinks he's doing it all for _them_ , and Dean's the honest wife that can't see her beloved fall to such depths. Clearly, there is saving to be done, and it's _Dean_ that's going to have to save Cas, this time. From _himself_.

Oh, Cas. Asking God to give you a sign, _when he gave you Dean Winchester_. Dude, your conscience is right _there_. You listened to it, once. You overthrew _Heaven_ for it. But hubris has an interesting way of making us forget who we really ought to be listening to, doesn't it? Cas, you lucky bastard; God gave you an _external conscience_. ~~In a hot body. With a really tight ass.~~ Dean's like your daemon from _His Dark Materials_ , or something. ~~OH MY GOD, SOMEBODY WRITE THAT AU.~~ He's your auxiliary conscience, functioning independently because you are inherently a poor, besotted, will-retarded sheep incapable of independent thought without massively screwing it up, and like a dialysis machine works for weak kidneys, Dean works for _you_. As your moral compass. Freaking _look at where he's pointing_ , already.

The thing about Castiel, and why we all love him, is that he's so _good_. Even when he's being bad. That's why the ~~honest wives~~ Dean Winchesters of the world still want to believe in him, I guess.

But you know what _I_ believe? This really _is_ God's plan, from wherever he's gone conveniently AWOL to, like a Q, maybe to some kind of hyperspace Hawaii ~~with its own gratuitously shirtless Steve and Danno~~. God's plan is to _reform Heaven_.

You see, God's realized that his initial angel prototype was, er, kind of lacking, and I don't just mean in the jugless way (oh, Dean...!). No, what's wrong with the angels - all of them, but with Raphael as the ~~Dubya-loving~~ hawkish epitome of wrongness - is that they're all ~~Republican~~ incapable of free thought, and incapable of anything other than the sort of militaristic smitification that might be required of them from their superior, heh, officers. Or extremist politicians. Like Zachariah. There _are_ the splinter groups, the ones that get 'purged' from the ranks for non-conformity, like, say, Balthazar, who sort of went ~~Independent~~ nutsy, or Gabriel, who... uh, went ~~Clinton~~ lusty?

God - or, um, Supernatural!God - brought Castiel back _because he's the next prototype_. The experimental model for a _new_ type of angel. Angel 2.0. Obviously, there will be bugs. Embarrassing mishaps. Possibly blue screens of death. Reformatted ~~hard drives~~ moralities. Repeated ~~resurrections~~ reboots. But it's all to the good. Because God, see, is trying to make an angel with a _conscience_. Not just with a general, distant, frosty 'affection' for humanity as long as they're not screwing up (treating humans like abused pets who're only fed if they don't poop on the carpet), but with genuine _compassion_ for them, with actual bleeding _hearts_. Compassion for how much it sucks to have free will (rope to hang yourself with! Oh, Castiel!) even as it's obviously the best thing ever, and the only thing that makes anything like morality remotely possible.

Congratulations, Castiel! You are now discovering human folly. You're discovering the flip side of free will. Which means, of course, that you can _screw up_. Lucky for you, Dean's a [Hufflepuff](http://intimations.org/fanfic/supernatural/Old%20Country.html) and forgives all, including blood-drinking, soulless, temporarily psychopathic brothers. And you're his _brother_ , now - he _said_ so - which means he will goddamn believe in you until you get your shit together, but he will also kick that very shit _out_ of you until you do. Because that's the Winchester way. And you're part of the family, now, Cas. You _married into it_. (Dean, way to go in adding _another_ pseudo-incestuous, codependent romantic interest to your list of pseudo-incestuous, codependent romantic interests! First Sam, and now it's - Castiel? Who wasn't even your brother until you _made_ him your brother? Dude, are you seriously Freud's missing great-great-grandchild, or are you _really_ that incapable of non-incestuous relationships?)

ANYWAY. So, yeah. Castiel. Discovering human folly. And thereby learning true compassion for the human condition. Learning how important it is to be _good_ , but how _difficult_ it is, too, when you've got the sibilant, seductive whisperings of demons like Crowley (alcohol, sex, power, money) in your ear. The breed of angel that Castiel's the prototype for isn't going to be able to rock up to a town of a few thousand people and just randomly _smite_ it, like Uriel was able to. Because Castiel (and the other angels that will follow him) will learn to fucking _know_ that hurt, to _own_ it, to love and to fear and to doubt and to - to be _free_. These angels won't find it easy to massacre one or a zillion sentient beings with that very same (blessed, cursed) freedom. Because that's _empathy_.

In order to avoid disobedience, which is unpleasant and often stupid, especially if it's ill-informed, God made his first angels the Stepford Bitches from on high. But that turned out to be a mistake, because fathers always make mistakes with their eldest sons. You know, you put too much pressure on 'em, expect too much, and they turn either into toe-the-line drones (Michael, anyone?) or wicked rebels without a cause (Lucifer, anyone?), or just plain psychopaths (Raphael, anyone?). Only if the raw material is pure _gold_ , like Dean Winchester, does a father get away with being an asshole.

So, yeah. God wasn't an experienced father, when he sired his first angelic sons from the loins of darkest space. When he let there be light. Whatever. He wasn't _experienced_ , he fucked up, and he sort of created this messed-up, unpopular Windows version of world events (THE APOCALYPSE!) that nobody wanted to use, but everybody got saddled with, anyway. (LITTLE TO NO MARKET COMPETITION. Except from Lucifer.) Somewhere along the line, though, God figured out that he'd screwed up and needed to go Mac OS. Okay? Okay. But _how_? Well, throw in some Winchesters, a couple resurrections, one _incredibly_ sweet angel in an inexplicable trenchcoat and mysteriously ever-present stubble, and voila! You have an averted Apocalypse (de-bugging your own system with a nano-virus of unknowing rebellion!), and, eventually, a reformed Heaven. So you're just gonna sit tight and watch your little angel stumble through folly after folly - such as pride, which, naturally, cometh before a fall.

Crowley _gets_ that. Well, not _all_ of that, I hope (or he wouldn't be a demon!), but he can _sense_ that Castiel is God's new messenger, his seed for a new world, his freaking angelic Noah's Arc. And it's that seed of truth in Crowley's words that so convinced Castiel, because Castiel is a truth-fetishist, despite being a compulsive liar. (Hey, he's an angel. Angels can't _deny_ the truth. Especially when it strokes their egos.) Just as humans have fallen, time and again, to demonic temptations half-clad in truth, like Playboy models half-clad in pure-white towels, Castiel fell, too. It was unavoidable. And he'll _keep_ falling, until he learns to tell right from wrong for himself, without having to always consult his ~~one true love~~ ~~daemon~~ ~~soul brother~~ external conscience. (Who is Dean Winchester.)

The game's afoot. Castiel will continue to crack, beautifully and inescapably, until there are enough pretty pieces of himself for Dean to gather up in his gentle hands and sew back together. He'll _continue_ to fuck up, in the name of Good, until he figures out what Good _is_. But when he _does_ figure it out? He'll be the new breed of angel. He'll be version 2.0. And after him will come others, angels learning to cherish and to fight and to feel terror when the ones they love might come to harm.

Baby, hang in there. Fangirls, hang in there. _Dean_ , hang in there. Your hubby's coming back to you.


End file.
